to do some writing, and sat down at one of the
tables. A crowd gathered round me, and were much interested. One elderly
Chinese with huge glasses, a wag in his own way, seeing that I did not
speak Chinese, thought to make me understand and divert the crowd by the
loudness of his speech, and, insisting that I was deaf, yelled into my
ears in tones that shook the tympanum. I told the foolish fellow, in
English, that the less he talked the better I could understand him; but
he persisted, and poked his face almost into mine, but withdrew it and
hobbled off in umbrage when I drew the attention of the bystanders to
the absurd capacity of his mouth, which was larger than any mule's.

I must admit that my knowledge of Chinese was very scanty, so scanty
indeed as to be almost non-existent. What few words I knew were rarely
intelligible; but, as Mrs. General Baynes, when staying at Boulogne,
found Hindostanee to be of great help in speaking French, so did I
discover that English was of great assistance to me in conversing in
Chinese. Remonstrance was thus made much more effective. Whenever I was
in a difficulty, or the crowd too obtrusive, I had only to say a few
grave sentences in English, and I was master of the situation. This
method of speaking often reminded me of that employed by a Cornish lady
of high family whose husband was a colleague of mine in Spain. She had
been many years in Andalusia, but had never succeeded in mastering
Spanish. At a dinner party given by this lady, at which I was present,
she thus addressed her Spanish servant, who did not "possess" a single
word of English: "Bring me," she said in an angry aside, "bring me the
_cuchillo_ with the black-handled heft," adding, as she turned to us and
thumped her fist on the table, while the servant stood still mystified,
"D---- the language! I wish I had never learnt it."

The inn, where the sedan left me, was built over the pathway, which was
here a narrow track, two feet six inches wide. Mountain coolies on the
road were passing in single file through the inn, their backs bending
under their huge burdens. Pigs and fowls and dogs, and a stray cat, were
foraging for crumbs under the table. Through the open doorways you saw
the paddy-fields under water and the terraced hills, with every arable
yard under cultivation. The air was hot and enervating. "The country of
the clouds," as the Chinese term the province of Szechuen, does not
belie its name. An elderly woman w